British rock: Encyclopedia - British rock

British rock

British rock was born out of the influence of rock and roll and rhythm and blues from the United States, but added a new drive and urgency, exporting the music back and widening the audience for black R & B in the U.S. as well as spreading the gospel world wide. Much of what has made rock music unique, in its ability to unite audiences and adapt new influences, came from British bands in the late 50s and rock groups in the early 60s.

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British rock - 1950s birth of British rock

The Trad jazz movement spawned an offshoot when Chris Barber's Jazz Band introduced interval entertainment with their banjo player Lonnie Donegan playing guitar "skiffle". He had an unlikely hit with his version of Leadbelly's "Rock Island Line", recorded in 1955 and becoming a hit in both Britain and the U.S.A. in 1956. Skiffle introduced the idea of music being easy to play and spawned "skiffle groups" across the country, including "The Quarrymen" in Liverpool who would later become the Beatles. The folk scene also increased the appetite for Blues, bringing across artists like Big Bill Broonzy and Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee but there was a puritanical insistence on keeping music acoustic.

American rock and roll had an impact across the globe in the 1950s, perhaps most intensely in Britain, where record collecting and trend-watching were in full bloom among the emerging "teenage" culture prior to the rock era, and where colour barriers were barely an issue. The British were quick to follow the success of Elvis Presley and in 1958 three British teenagers formed a rock and roll group, 'Cliff Richard and the Drifters (later renamed Cliff Richard and the Shadows). The group recorded a hit, "Move It", marking not only what is held to be the very first British full-on rock 'n' roll single, but also the beginnings of a different sound – British rock, prophesying "they say that rock is dead, but let's face it; we just don't know what's going to replace it". In the 60s other British groups would show them. They were not alone in copying the genre, others included Tommy Steele and Adam Faith.

Cliff Richard and the Shadows became the most influential band in the UK and set standards for following British (and American) groups. With two guitars, bass guitar and drums, they also changed the way the guitar was featured, introducing the Fender Stratocaster and the concept of a "lead guitar" virtuoso (Hank Marvin) to the rock scene and featuring an electric bass guitar instead of the usual standup bass. Appealing almost exclusively to and hugely popular with youth in Britain (including the nascent Beatles) as well as across Europe, Cliff and the Shads also influenced many UK teenagers to begin buying records, a trend which would reach a peak with The Beatles a few years later. The group also paved the way for the Beatles in other ways, touring the US (without much fanfare) and whetting US record companies' appetites for a youth-oriented band to market stateside.

British rock - 1960s rockers and rock groups

Rock & Roll faded as Cliff, the Shads and the others followed Elvis into lightweight pop and schmaltzy ballads, but rock groups were stirring at a basement club level. With their 1960 hit "Shakin' all over" Johnny Kidd and the Pirates introduced a harder beat for motorbike rockers and the song was soon being played by amateur groups at dances all round the UK along with R & B from the likes of Jimmy Reed, John Lee Hooker and invariably Chuck Berry's "Johnny B. Goode". London's blues clubs featured Alexis Korner's Blues Incorporated which attracted the young trad jazz clarinettist Brian Jones to sit in and decide he too wanted a blues band. Separately, Mick Jagger and Keith Richards joined in for sets along with Korner's drummer Charlie Watts, starting with Berry's "Around and Around". A group developed, taking their name from a Muddy Waters song, and the Rolling Stones formed on 12 July 1962.

In 1962 the growing "Beat group" boom surfaced with the signing of Liverpool groups including Brian Poole and the Tremeloes whose hit with their cover of "Do You Love Me" (now that I can dance?) caught the mood: "I can mashed potato, I can do the twist, tell me baby, do you like it like this?" The Beatles were an established Liverpool group, and on 5 October 1962 their first single "Love Me Do" came out. Already this new sound stood out. The beat got harder and the music more inventive with the Beatle's songwriting talents pulling them away from the pack. British rock had established its distinctive identity. The Rolling Stones got their first hit in June 1963 with a high-charged version of Berry's "Come On". Later, The Animals added their blues-rock version of "the House of the Rising Sun". The Who with "My Generation" and the Kinks with "You Really Got Me" kept up the rush while adding a new Mod style. Songs then became more lyrical and ingenious while retaining the distinctive driving rhythm, outright blues were issued with a hard beat instead of the bounce of the originals. This new and developing pop sound drew international interest.

British rock - The British Invasion 1964–1969

Main article: British Invasion The Beatles brought together a near-perfect mix of image, songwriting, and personality. After their initial UK success they were signed in the US and launched a large-scale stateside tour to ecstatic reaction, a phenomenon quickly dubbed Beatlemania. Although they were not the first British band to come to America, they spearheaded the Invasion, triumphing in the U.S. on their first visit in 1964 (including historic appearances on the Ed Sullivan Show). In the wake of Beatlemania other British bands headed to the U.S., notably The Rolling Stones, who disdained the Beatles' clean-cut image and presented a darker, more aggressive image, The Animals and The Yardbirds. Throughout the early and mid-'60s Americans seemed to have an insatialble appetite for British rock; one of the groups who made a greater mark in the USA than on the UK was Herman's Hermits. Other British bands, including The Who and The Kinks, would have some success during this period but saved their peak of popularity for the second wave of British invasion in the late 1960s.

To Americans, the British Invasion was when British rock music started. To listeners in the UK and elsewhere, there was no invasion, for these groups as well as many who never gained worldwide recognition had been around since the end of the 50s.

British rock - Blues-rock

Main article: Blues-rock The electric blues scene prospered, with John Mayall's Bluesbreakers acting as a breeding ground for new talent.

Main article: Canterbury Sound

British rock - Psychedelic rock

Main article: Psychedelic rock Druggy references increased in 1966 with Donovan's "Sunshine Superman", Manfred Mann's version of Bob Dylan's "Mighty Quinn" promised snow and the Smoke's "My friend Jack eats sugar lumps" added an acid touch. The Pink Floyd and the Soft Machine took things much fuurther. "The Who sell out" included their psychedelic single "I can see for miles" but the jokey commercialism of the album missed the mood. People were wondering if the Beatles had fallen behind when "Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" blasted them to the forefront again.

British rock - Progressive rock

Main article: Progressive rock

British rock - Heavy metal

Main article: Heavy metal music An early reference to this genre came when psychedelic poster design artists Hapdash and the Coloured Coat produced an album starring themselves, "the Human Host and the Heavy Metal Kids".

British rock - Folk-rock

Main article: Folk-rock

British rock - Glam rock

Main article: Glam rock

British rock - Punk rock

Main article: Punk rock

Punk rock started off as a reaction to the lush, producer-driven sounds of disco, and against the commercialism of most progressive rock. Early punk borrowed heavily from the garage band ethic: played by bands for which expert musicianship was not a requirement, punk was stripped-down, three-chord music that could be played easily and often bore a close resemblance to the American "punk rock" from the late 60's on the "Nuggets" collection issued in 1972 on Electra featuring artists like The Electric Prunes and The Seeds. Many of the new punk rock bands also intended to shock mainstream society, rejecting the "peace and love" image of the prior musical rebellion of the 1960s which had degenerated, punks thought, into mellow disco culture.

Punk rose to public awareness nearly simultaneously in Britain with the Sex Pistols and in America with the Ramones.

The Sex Pistols chose aggressive stage names (including "Johnny Rotten" and "Sid Vicious") and did their best to live up to them, deliberately rejecting anything that symbolized "hippies": long hair, soft music, loose clothing, and liberal politics, and displaying an anarchic, often confrontational, stage presence (well represented on their debut single "Anarchy in the UK". Their second single release, "God Save The Queen" was a scathing polemic against British traditions and mores. Despite an airplay ban on the BBC the record rose to the top chart position in the UK. The Sex Pistols paved the way for The Clash, whose approach was less nihilistic but more overtly political and idealistic.

The Ramones (whose first album was actually released months before "God Save the Queen") exemplified the American side of punk: equally aggressive but mostly apolitical, more alienated, and not above (often illicit and self-destructive) fun for its own sake. The Ramones reigned as the kings of the New York punk scene, which also included Richard Hell and Television, and centered around rough-and tumble clubs, notably CBGB, a former bluegrass venue in Manhattan taken over by punks after the owner began booking punk bands on off nights. Punk was mostly an East-coast phenomenon in the US until the late 1970s when Los Angeles-based bands such as X and Black Flag broke through to wide recognition.

Punk rock attracted devotees from the art and collegiate world and soon bands sporting a more literate, arty approach, such as the Talking Heads and Devo began to infiltrate the punk scene; in some quarters the description New Wave began to be used to differentiate these less overtly punk bands.

If punk rock was a social and musical phenomenon, it garnered little in the way of record sales (small specialty labels such as Stiff Records had released much of the punk music to date) or American radio airplay, as the radio scene continued to be dominated by mainstream formats such as disco and AOR. Record executives, who had been mostly mystified by the punk movement, recognized the potential of the more accessible New Wave acts and began aggressively signing and marketing any band that could claim a remote connection to Punk or New Wave. Many of these bands, such as The Cars and The Go-Gos were essentially pop bands dressed up in New Wave regalia; others, including The Police and The Pretenders managed to parlay the boost of the New Wave movement into long-lived and artistically lauded careers.

Punk and post-punk bands would continue to appear sporadically, but as a musical scene, punk had largely self-destructed and been subsumed into mainstream new-wave pop by the mid-1980s, but the influence of punk has been substantial. The grunge-rock movement of the late 1980s owes much to punk, and many current mainstream bands claim punk rock as their stylistic heritage. Punk also bred other genres, including hardcore, industrial music, and goth.

British rock - Alternative rock

Main article: Alternative music

British rock - Twee pop

Main article: Twee pop

British rock - Space rock

Main article: Space rock

British rock - Shoegazing

Main article: Shoegazing

British rock - Dream pop

Main article: Dream pop

British rock - Gothic rock

Main article: Gothic rock

British rock - Modern music

In Britain, there is a new trend in copying 1970s rock bands in the form of wild clothing and long guitar solos, e.g. The Darkness. Though The Darkness have proved to be very popular it remains to be seen if this trend will become mainstream, with other bands emulating them.

British rock - Britpop

Main article: Britpop

Categories: British styles of music | Rock music by nationality

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